The present invention pertains to apparatus for reconditioning electrical terminals of electrical work pieces, such as leadless chip carriers (LCC's).
Oftentimes it is necessary to recondition the electrical terminals of electrical work pieces prior to connecting the work pieces to a circuit board. Such reconditioning is necessary to assure quality if the work piece has been stored for a long time following manufacture, because intermetallic growth occurs in the terminals over a prolonged period. Also, some terminals include gold, which must be removed and replaced with a tin-lead solder in order to meet certain prescribed manufacturing standards. Such reconditioning is sometimes referred to as pretinning.
Typically, the reconditioning is accomplished by manually handling each work piece and performing the steps of bathing the work piece in a flux bath, placing the bathed work piece in a liquid solder well to remove any gold and provide new solder to the terminals, and cooling and the cleaning the work piece.